Any way to reseal the differential without taking it apart?
 

Hey Guys,

My diff is starting to leak around the gasket area, is there any way of sealing it without having to pull the axles to pull the whole thing apart?

Sam

If you are talking about the seal on the forward side of the rear where the drive shaft mounts, then it is just a matter of taking the bolts out, scraping off the old gasket material, and putting new sealant on. This is how it was on my SE rear.

Mike

How can you take that off without taking out the axles? The axles run through it

Ahhh, so you are talking about the drive axle seals. In this case, you cannot replace them without removing the axles. I thought you were talking about the seal on the 3rd member itself on the front side.

I think you are meaning where the pumpkin bolts to the case. If that's the case you can just pop out the axles a bit, and then remove the pumpkin and reseal with silicone. If you don't want to go that far, you could try cleaning the area well and then applying some silicone sealant over top. May have to drain the diff fluid to keep the oil from dripping out while the sealant hardens.

Pop out the axles a bit? You make sound so easy. Once you have disturbed the axle/seal relationship, don't you have to replace the axle seals anyway?
I'm facing repairing a fragged open diff on my son's '83 (no, we don't want to upgrade now).

Slide hammer on the axles pop them right out (after removing the retaining bolts). Even if you did need to replace the inner oil seal, you can easily do that without removing the bearings on the axle.. the oil seals are in the housing itself.

It kinda is easy to take the whole thing apart, but I just don't want to go through that hassle. I will probably try unscrewing all the bolts, and even if I can get about 1/8" of gap in there it should suffice to put the new silicone in. I just don't remember if I can pull it out just a bit or not.

Do you know where it is leaking from exactly? I mean the easiest would be to try cleaning up the surface and slopping on some sealant with it still together. Not pretty but would probably stop the drip. Otherwise you might as well do it properly and take it right off.

not exactly sure of where it coming from. I had the diff apart about 3 years ago but looks like i made the mistake of using the blue gasket maker as oppose to the high temp one. Didn't know back then how hot those things get, especially after going on the track a few times.